PRINCIPLES, HERMENEUTICS AND THE CRITIQUE OF LEGAL FORM: TOWARD AN EMANCIPATORY RECONSTRUCTION OF LEGAL RATIONALITY

Abstract

This article examines whether the renewed normative role of constitutional principles and legal argumentation is sufficient to overcome formalism without shifting adjudication toward judicial decisionism. Its objective is to critically reconstruct contemporary legal rationality through a dialogue among post-positivism, hermeneutics, discourse theory, legal guarantees, and the critique of legal form. Methodologically, the study adopts a theoretical, qualitative, and bibliographic approach of an analytical-comparative nature, based on a critical reading of major authors in legal philosophy and legal theory, especially Kelsen, Radbruch, Dworkin, Alexy, Habermas, Ferrajoli, Streck, and Lukács. The analysis yields three main findings: the insufficiency of formal validity as the exclusive criterion of legality; the need to subject principle-based interpretation to requirements of coherence, integrity, and public justification; and the persistence of structural limits produced by the abstraction and universality of legal form. The article concludes that democratically legitimate legal rationality can be reduced neither to mechanical subsumption nor to the interpreter’s moral discretion. Its emancipatory dimension depends on the articulation of constitutional normativity, institutional guarantees, hermeneutic responsibility, and attention to material inequalities that condition the effectiveness of fundamental rights.